STAR blinks out of I-81

STAR Solutions, the big business consortium that seems to have terrified many localities in the Shenandoah Valley with its $13 billion plan to put tolls and/or extra lanes on I-81, backed away yesterday from further planning with the Virginia Department of Transportation.

"They've now folded up their tent and gone away," says David L. Foster, the exultant director of Rail Solution, a group formed for the purpose of derailing Star Solutions. The group decried VDOT's refusal to consider that freight railroading might obviate much of the need to expand already truck-heavy I-81.

It was Rail Solution, after all, that published dramatic–- some might say nightmarish–- renderings of how a football field-wide I-81 might appear on the bucolic Virginia landscape. But what particularly riled the group was VDOT's seeming insistence on dealing only with STAR for I-81's future–- something Foster's group called an "exclusive entitlement."

Although some conservation groups filed suit against the Federal Highway Administration in December, Foster believes that it might have been a FOIA request by his group that ended up killing STAR Solutions.

What hasn't died with Wednesday's announcement that STAR is quitting the I-81 business is the desire to build $145 million worth of additional truck-climbing lanes in two Virginia counties, Rockbridge and Montgomery.

"They simply will be bid like any other VDOT project," says a relieved Foster.

As for his group, Foster says the work isn't over. Rail Solution wants to see the results of Cline's bill, the joint Norfolk Southern-VDOT rail study, expected later this year. But for now Foster says, "There's a tendency to get out some balloons and champagne and do a little chest-pumping."

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2 comments

jmcnamera January 18th, 2008 | 11:01am

This is great news, but unfortunately we still aren't closer to having an effective freight rail thru the valley.

Maybe if the beefed up the existing line from DC, thru Charlottesville, Lynchburg, etc it could move the trucks. The rail right of way is wide enough to add an extra line (there used to another line).

All that would be needed then would be a way to load/unload trucks at the borders.

Cville Eye January 17th, 2008 | 7:15pm

I guess we will have to be more patient in waiting for VDOT to change the way it does business. I'm glad we have knowledgeable citizens who are dedicated to finding alternate solutions to transportation. And, it's good to see that some legislators are slowly being more willing to listen to them a little. I keep reminding myself of how many decades it took women to get suffrage in this country.